


Because We (Are, Were, Will Be) Bound

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 5x13 AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because they are knit together at the soul doesn't mean their ending is happy. But maybe, just maybe, it means they get a chance at something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because We (Are, Were, Will Be) Bound

He must have done something terrible beyond words in a previous life, to be cursed with a bondmate who hates him. A bondmate who has married another, and willingly shares her bed.

Oh, Arthur is kind to him, and cares for him, as much as he lets himself show concern for a servant – which is more than any other noble in the five kingdoms, the years have given Merlin no illusions about that. Arthur is his friend, and Merlin would give his life for his king without a thought.

That only makes it harder.

He loved Arthur enough to let him go into the care of another, and still to stay at his side where he was needed in some small way, to watch and to smile and when necessary, to turn his eyes away.

Merlin is a sorcerer, a warlock, born with magic – and beyond that, he is bound to Arthur. He can feel things, through the bond, that Arthur will never say.

Bonds are not spoken of, in Camelot, but everyone knows they exist. There was a fledgling tie between Sir Leon and the Lady Morgana, after all, that left him ill when she was first taken by Morgause all those years ago. All of Camelot feared for her life, not knowing what the sorceress was doing to her.

Merlin knew that it was the poison, and not Morgause, and spent hours in penance, tending to Leon as he recovered.

So Merlin can feel Arthur's emotions, when they are strong enough and direct enough. Years of constantly being in Arthur's company have left Merlin knowing Arthur better than he knows himself.

Arthur is honest, and brave, and true-hearted, for all his many faults. He is wary of magic, and tends to assume the worst of sorcerers – which, given that far more of them try to kill him than simply pass him by, is fair enough. But his feelings on bonding are . . . complicated, and dark.

After being blasted in the heart by Arthur's hatred every time the subject comes up, Merlin guards the secret of their bond more closely than even his magic, or his life. Gaius does not know; even his mother only suspects. It is one thing to bear the brunt of Arthur's unknowing disgust; it would be quite another to open himself to a lance aimed squarely at his soul.

He has accepted the bond; at first touch, hand twisted behind his back, knowing nothing of Arthur but that he was a prat and a bully, he accepted the bond. Even beyond the veneer of snobbery, he could sense something deeper that made his eyes widen in awe. Something of greatness, and the quality of Arthur's heart.

Merlin took the first  _zing_  of connection between them, and willingly embedded it in his soul.

Arthur ignored it.

He has ignored it, for the last ten years.

Most of the time, Merlin is certain Arthur just doesn't know. Bonds were not revered in Camelot after the death of Queen Ygraine and Uther's improbable survival. Merlin has never heard them whispered of by the court or in the castle; even in the lower town, people don't say the word, and just call it love. After decades of silence, for many, the knowledge is just not there.

On his bad days, Merlin is haunted by the thought that Arthur is as aware as he; that his silence, this permanent limbo between rejection and acceptance, is Arthur's choice and Merlin's answer.

There have been days so dark, Merlin has tried to run – when he first realized Arthur held no care for him that a bondmate would; when making Arthur happy meant smiling as he pushed the Prince and Gwen toward each other; when Freya died, taking his dreams of something  _else_  with her.

When Arthur and Gwen married.

Every time Arthur made love to Gwen, and Merlin, no matter how far away, felt his body fruitlessly respond to the emotions seeping through their bond. Watching his own body rise, and spend, and betray him, all with his arms wrapped tightly around his own torso, hands fisted under his armpits, spine and legs bent in a protective curl providing the only comfort he would ever receive in this life.

And it  _hurts_ ; it hurts down through the marrow of his bones. Every time, he feels his soul shred, just a little, bleeding pain from the corners of his eyes.

It is worse because there are no children.

Merlin prayed nightly for a child for Arthur, a living being with Arthur's heart and Gwen's eyes; an heir to the throne that would give proof to him that standing aside was right, that she could give Arthur what Merlin never could. A child, to kill the last of his unruly hope and longing.

He knew it could not be after Gwen broke the love spell that had thrown Arthur towards Vivian. He knew his hope a ridiculous thing when they finally married before the court, and Gwen was crowned. But it still lives, fluttering behind the barriers he threw up, hiding his connection to Arthur, walling it off as best he can. Better to kill it quickly, a bright sharp pain, than let it pull his heart out slowly through his ribs.

And a child of Arthur's he could care for openly, and hold, without receiving only hatred or indifference in return.

But there is no child.

There is only Camlann.

* * *

"Just . . . just hold me." Arthur's voice is a broken whisper.

Merlin clutches him tight. He would give anything not to have those words be Arthur's last, but he has nothing to give.

Except himself.

It could work. It could. Normally, when one bondmate dies, so does the other – but Arthur is not bound to him. He is tied to Arthur by blood, bone, and breath, but Arthur never accepted the bond.

They don't both have to die here, today.

Kilgarrah sees it in his eyes when he looks up. The breath the Great Dragon exhales over him brings an awful knowledge, one that would normally be abuse of a bond such as theirs, and murder.

But it is not, because Arthur has never known.

Merlin has never been so grateful for that in all his existence.

Knees buried in the grass, Merlin rests one palm over Arthur's heart, and the other over the wound – the furrow cut in Arthur's body where a splinter of metal forged in dragon's breath burrows towards Arthur's heart.

What he is about to do would likely earn him a swat over the head from Gaius.

He dives down into the bond, then – throwing all the doors open, and pulling his magic up under his skin. He can feel the energy, the power – and it calls to the dark magic burning in Arthur's wound.

Opposites attract, after all.

Merlin makes himself a tempting target, and waits.

He doesn't have to wait long.

The bond itself is an open road, though it goes only one way. Merlin holds himself open to anything that comes from Arthur, dangling his soul as bait and his magic as both carrot and stick – forcing the shard from Arthur's body, and offering a replacement at the same time.

To save a life, a life must be taken. Merlin knows this.

The shard of metal comes to him, shredding the bond in its wake.

And there is pain; of course there is. Deep and biting and stealing his breath, stabbing with every beat of his heart. But it is not as important as forcing his magic through Arthur, sealing up the furrow from the inside out even as metal digs deeply into his own flesh.

His last thought, as he closes the skin beneath the tear in Arthur's chainmail so smoothly that not even a scar remains, is that he imagines he can feel the shard touch his heart.

* * *

There is something heavy lying on his chest.

He is alive.

It takes him a moment to confirm that – his own life – because the pain is gone. But the discomfort from whatever is compressing his ribs is enough to prove that this is not the afterlife. Arthur is certain that death is the only place beyond pain, and therefore it stands that death is beyond aches and shortened breath, as well.

Blinking through blurred eyes, he can see a mess of black strands above a mix of brown and blue and red. "Merlin?"

Merlin is never silent, not even in sleep. Not unless he is unconscious.

He can raise a hand now, rubbing his eyes, pushing himself up. With clear sight comes the realization that Merlin's fair skin is far too pale, almost translucent, even under the weak rays of a clouded sun.

His head lolls when Arthur shakes him, and shouting his manservant's name has no avail. Arthur is mustering up the courage to strike Merlin's face – to wake him, why won't he wake he must wake – when a rush of heated air blasts across his skin.

"That will not rouse him, Pendragon."

The voice is low and raspy, resonating deep in his  _bones_.

Mouth open to respond, Arthur looks up. And up.

_I killed you_  is the first thing he cannot say.  _Merlin, your secrets will be the death of me_  is the second, utterly truer than the first.

The dragon is clearly defined by the fading day, moreso than it ever was at night, hidden in the blackness between the stars. It is not as he remembers, even so; blue-green scales are a sickly brown, and one wing drags, torn at the joint where delicate membrane meets its spine. Somehow, the years have been kinder to Arthur than to this creature, though it is by far the more indestructible of the two.

Or so he had thought.

Arthur never knew it could talk.

"What's wrong with him?" He finally finds his own tongue.

The dragon's head tilts in a curiously familiar motion that Arthur has seen in his dogs, curiosity and intelligence as they examine something new. Whatever the dragon is looking at, it is invisible to human eyes.

"His bond is gone."

Merlin. Has a bond.

Had a bond.

"Who?" Arthur doesn't recognize his own voice, thready with shock. How many more secrets exist for him to unearth?

The dragon doesn't answer, and its gold eyes don't leave him.

The oddness plaguing him since his eyes opened has not desisted; instead, the strange dissociation has grown with this new revelation. It is more than simply brushing by death. Arthur knows that feeling well. But this – this  _lack_  of what he thought he knew, about a man closer to him than his next breath, leaves him scrabbling for balance in the rough dirt of the lakeshore.

When he can bear the silence no longer, Arthur raises a hand to the slit in his chainmail and the whole skin beneath. "What happened?"

For a long moment, he doesn't think it will answer. When it does, he catches a glimpse of its teeth, and the words are almost lost under the visceral weight of remembered terror. "Merlin drew the shard from you, that I could destroy it. The only way to destroy a blade forged in a dragon's breath is by a dragon's will and fire."

And then Merlin healed him, that much is obvious.

But they are still as they were before, one whole and one abrink of death.

"Will he wake?"

"Perhaps, with time. The young warlock accepted the bond, though his bondmate never did."

Bondmate. Something sour lingers in Arthur's belly, his throat strangle-tight against each breath. Beyond that is the relief of hope, breaking across his skin with a ripple of goosebumps. Merlin breathes yet, and there is hope. If – "I must get him to Camelot."

Arthur realizes his feet, expecting a rush of lightheadedness and fading vision that has plagued him for days and now, never comes. It is as if he has swallowed the sun, and supple strength pervades every limb. The horses are nowhere to be seen, but the way Arthur feels, he could carry Merlin the length of Camelot, if necessary.

He is rising from his knees, manservant limp over one shoulder, when a shuffle of scales grates over the wind.

"If he wakes," the dragon murmurs – and Arthur wants to shout  _when_ ,  _when he wakes_  – "tell him that I shall miss him. And that his call will be answered by another."

Arthur is blinking at the implications of  _another_  when it lumbers into the air; not so graceful as he remembers, and the wing is certainly torn for each downsweep is shallower on one side than the other.  _It is dying._

For all it has killed scores of his people, Arthur cannot but mourn, a little, and wonder what consequences its passing will bring.

* * *

He does not have to carry Merlin all the way to Camelot.

Two leagues into the journey – two leagues that take longer than they ought, and put lie to the health that had flushed through him upon awakening, for his body  _aches_  – Percival finds them. His knight rides one horse and leads another, with a form draped in Camelot red folded over its back. Brown locks peek from the crimson swathe.

Arthur would recognize that head of hair anywhere, and grief rushes over him. He'd thought he'd spent all his sorrow on the field at Camlann, channeled into his sword to wreak vengeance upon the Saxons, but he has not even felt the full weight of it yet.

Percival's face, twisted in sorrow, relaxes at the sight of them, and more so at the news that Merlin yet lives.

There is nothing for it, though, but for Percival to hold Merlin tight while Arthur rides with Gwaine, to balance their weight enough that the horses can continue. Saxons roam, but neither of them can stomach the thought of leaving Gwaine's body behind.

Arthur can count on one hand the number of days in his life that have, through dread, stretched longer.

The lower town looks as it always does when they reach the city, and Arthur is glad at least that Camlann which would have killed him spared his people the devastation of their homes and livelihoods. The first person who sees him is a little girl with a thumb in her mouth and a collection of rags shaped like a doll clamped under one arm. She tugs her mother's skirt, and the woman drops her basket when she catches sight of them, grain spilling out across the path.

No messenger has gone before them, but a whisper flies up the street as they proceed, and the people come forth.

It is like no welcoming Arthur has ever seen. No one cheers – silence and stillness reign. But the people are pulled from their homes and tasks, lining the streets to the Citadel. Arthur sees them clutching one another; tears stream down their faces. For all the loudest sound is the  _clop-clop_  of hooves against packed dirt, joy sings through the town.

They are met in the courtyard by Gaius and Guinevere and the tattered remnants of Arthur's knights, caped and bandaged and standing proud, as they should be.

Percival refuses to relinquish Merlin except to his own bed, and they are crowded together in Merlin's tiny garret, Arthur and Gwen and Gaius, when Arthur quietly reveals what the dragon told him about Merlin's bond. Gwen's hands fly to her mouth, muffling a sob. Gaius's eyebrow climbs ever higher before his face softens in sorrow. Percival shakes his head, heaving a great sigh.

Arthur thinks of Gwaine, his body being prepared even now for funeral. And wonders.

But Merlin sleeps, for days upon days, and each hour spent by his bedside is enough to tangle his musings into a knot. He wants to be certain, but Merlin has snuck by on Arthur's blithe assumptions for too long. Further, Arthur cannot quite make the timeline from Percival's report match up with his own piecemeal recollections.

He wants to know.

He does not know if he can bring himself to ask. One day, he is resolved to do so; the next, certain that he could never.

Arthur waffles between extremes for a solid sevenday – a sevenday of coaxing broth into Merlin and necessarily changing his linens, sponging down his body and wrapping too-cool limbs in the softest wool to be found – before his manservant even stirs.

That day, Gaius manages a smile for the first time since Camlann, and Arthur's come easier as every day Merlin is more and more restless, with friends taking turns at his bedside, urging him to wake.

Finally, finally, blue eyes crack open, and Arthur is there to see recognition in them.

* * *

There is something wrong with Merlin.

It is nothing Arthur can articulate to anyone but Gaius and Gwen, and it is traceable back to that damn bond that it appears no one, save Merlin, even knew existed.

The world moves, and they all move with it; but Merlin trails a half-step behind, ever-so-much slower, ever-so-slightly out of beat with the rest of them.

There is a longer pause, now, between Arthur's jibes and Merlin's smart retorts, though Merlin's surprising wisdom still pops out at the most particular times. Merlin still goes to find herbs for Gaius and comes back having lost a day in the woods with everything the physician needs – but now, whether or not it is in season seems to make no difference to Merlin.

Arthur learns that he cannot change the order in which he gives Merlin his chores without the other man forgetting something, and being thrown into a panic riddled with apologies that rattles furniture and causes candles to spark. If Arthur does not address a sudden change in routine calmly, without raising his voice, Merlin will fumble as he always does, words tumbling free like tapped ale in a bar. But his hands will shake as they never did and he will not be calmed until he can place a palm against the spot beneath Arthur's ribs where a bade forged in a dragon's breath sliced through his insides.

Arthur regrets every joke, every excuse of a mental affliction, every time he called Merlin  _idiot_  and even in the smallest way meant it. It is the gods' purview, after all, to teach men to have care with their words by giving them truth.

He modifies the ban on magic, reigning in the laws that murder children, that allow villages to burn one of their own outside the sanction of the Crown. It takes time, and patience, for the persecution to fade; and Arthur is no fool – his life will be spent healing the wound his father left upon the Kingdom without losing the lesson learned by the cut in the first place.

He tells Merlin this, and Merlin smiles with his eyes focused on something Arthur cannot see. "You are the Once and Future King, Arthur. You have united the land of Albion. Now, you will unite its people."

Arthur doesn't know what to say, and so finally claims that unification is hungry work, and sends Merlin to fetch him whatever fruit tarts the kitchens have to spare. Merlin brings back four, and they share them, crumbs spilling over copies of treatises that swear the Five Kingdoms to peace.

Merlin asks him, offhandedly, one evening, if Arthur might grant him permission. When Arthur finds out why, it's all he can do not to shout; anger still lifts his voice and sets Merlin scuttling for the servant's entrance to his rooms, ducking and weaving in a reflex that shames Arthur into taking a deep breath, and calling him back.

Arthur has not thrown anything at Merlin since he found out that it would only hit if Merlin let it.

It is a long discussion, broken by Merlin's sudden weeping and unintelligible words. All Arthur can gather is that his manservant has a responsibility to this living thing – and why; was Arthur not responsibility enough for one life? – and he feels he has failed it. That Merlin believes he left a defenseless babe to the tender mercies of the Sarrum, with no one to turn to but Morgana, bitter herself and at the root unable to raise the creature to the light.

Arthur cannot say no. He has no idea how to say yes. But Merlin gets his permission.

The first day is tense; the knights, if no one else, remember this twisted, pale creature and its fire from the battlefield. The second day is not much better. But it is soon clear that the baby dragon is harmless unless directed to do harm; it has little will to do other than lay in the sun, or curl along the rocks of the creek, or roll in the long grass of the meadow to the west of the lower town.

They are soon a common enough sight to see playing in the courtyard of the citadel; Merlin on the steps and Aithusa on the cobbles, two broken creatures finding happiness how they can among the pieces of their shattered worlds.

Arthur is pondering the sight one rare, sunny day on which petitions have been blessedly brief, when Gwen creeps up to him, and whispers a miracle in his ear.

* * *

There will be a child in the royal nursery once again.

Merlin knows almost to the instant the child is conceived, seeing it on Gwen that morning when he goes to wake Arthur up. This is something he knows he should not know, unlike other things that he sometimes cannot tell if he should know or not, so he smiles and says nothing, and offers Gwen only pressed juices and water boiled clean.

He thinks that maybe now the unbearable sadness curled inside him will be dissolved by happiness, since there will be enough joy with the coming of a child that some extra will spill onto him. (He used to be able to make his own happiness, Merlin is sure of it, but he has forgotten how.)

It is ten months, near enough, of Merlin whispering blessings and seeking out the freshest food, before the babe is born. Gwen's labor runs long and hard, as is the way of such things, and in the dawning of a chill winter's day she brings forth a son.

Arthur is third to hold the babe after the midwife and Gwen, and not long after that he passes his child, beaming, to Merlin.

His king says something, Merlin knows that he does, but when that frightening weight settles in his arms all Merlin can see is a field of battle, where a man grown in the likeness of his friend falls. "Llacheu," he whispers, and it becomes the boy's name.

Merlin holds all of Arthur's children after they are born, and he sees the shape of their names and the manner of their passing before they even open their eyes – and Arthur is gifted with more sons as he strives to give Gwen the daughter she longs for. Amr, Gwydre, and Duran follow Llacheu in the nursery, and the happiness Merlin once thought beyond him is multiplied in small smiles and eager little faces that greet him when he visits to play.

* * *

Over time, Merlin's strangeness loses its oddity, and as life continues Arthur has to fight harder to find pieces of the man he knew in his memory. Merlin is not  _so_  changed, but it never fails to sting Arthur's heart when new arrivals to the citadel lower their voices as he passes, murmuring how the King's manservant, for all his power, is a little  _touched_  – but he wouldn't harm a fly, no, not Merlin.

He resents it all the more as Merlin doesn't, and seems not to even notice.

It seems at times as if so much of Arthur's happiness is due to Merlin – his life, not the least – when Merlin has so little to himself that is not also Arthur's. Merlin is happy, Arthur can see that; Merlin dotes on Arthur's boys, each and every one, so that it is a fond struggle for Gwen to keep them from being spoiled by the attention. He cares also for Gaius as the indomitable physician frails with extreme old age, and is rarely seen without Aithusa.

But the years stretch on from Camlann, bringing healing and life better than Arthur could have dreamed. Albion is at peace, his family is a blessing, and Merlin is almost as he ever was.

Of course, of course, that is when the unthinkable happens.

* * *

Aithusa had been much recovered, though still a hatchling by dragon standards. But her body had straightened with space and grown plump with plenty. The sun had glimmered off her scales, and occasionally she had taken to rubbing up against outside corners of the citadel, attempting to scratch the growing spines on her back but digging through solid stone instead.

Why anyone thought to kill her, Arthur will never understand.

Merlin feels it, screaming up in bed in his tiny garret when someone sneaks past the guards with a crossbow, and puts an arrow through the hatchling's eye and into her brain.

Arthur does not know of it until the warning bell clangs, and when he enters the courtyard in his nightshirt and breeches, it is to find his manservant curled around the hatchling's body, blood smeared across his hands and down his arms as he begs her not to leave him.

She is already gone.

The day dawns cloudy, and the sun never shows its face even though the rain never falls. Gwen keeps the boys away from the nursery windows that day, redirecting them to lessons and training and games each time they ask after Uncle Merlin. For his part, Merlin does not leave Aithusa until night darkens the sky. Percival stays with him, from the quiet reports the guards bring Arthur after each shift change.

The next dawn, Aithusa and Merlin have vanished, and Percival can say only that Merlin took Aithusa to the sea. Merlin returns a week later, scrubbed clean by the waves and still smelling of salt, and they are right back where Camlann left them.

It is only a few days of watching Merlin pick at his food, in danger of losing all the weight Gwen had determinedly forced on him, before Arthur can broach the subject.

"Are you alright?"

Merlin slowly shakes his head. "It's like . . . like -"

"When your bondmate died?" Arthur interjects, so very, very gently. Because he can see it, in the translucence of Merlin's skin, in the faded blue of his eyes. Because Merlin has never spoken of it, and Gwen is insistent that he should.

Merlin blinks at that, slow and somehow quiet. "My bondmate didn't die, Arthur."

_What_  and  _Gwaine_  and  _how_  mash through Arthur's mind, leaving him with his jaw hanging slack for long moments as he struggles for words. "But you – the dragon – your bond," he sputters.

Merlin nods, and perhaps that made sense to him, as he is now. "My bond is gone, yes."

Arthur has heard of this, though, in the laws that carry the worst punishments.  _I will kill him, for doing this to Merlin_ , is all he can think, fingers gripped tight on the wooden rests of his chair.

"But I did it," and Merlin doesn't even seem to register Arthur's shock, tugging at a crust of bread that resists crumbling beneath his restless fingers. "I had to, Arthur. I had to save you."

"What?"

And the words come out then, slowly, as if Merlin has to pick and choose between them as one would sift through fruit in a stall at market. How they are soulmates, and that first touch between them, when Arthur caught Merlin's punch and calloused fingers rested on the thin skin of Merlin's wrist, sparked their connection. How Merlin waited, and waited, for Arthur to accept the connection – or failing that, to send him into the fevered wasteland of bond sickness with a rejection. How over the years even that limbo was enough to sustain him.

How, when Arthur was wounded, Merlin sacrificed the bond – "It wasn't real, anyway," Merlin says, so casual Arthur is horrified. "How can it be real when it is only one half?"

How Merlin's sacrifice saved Arthur's life.

Arthur knew, he realized. That odd distance he felt upon waking, that the real world was further away than his fingertips, stretching beyond what his eyes could see; that was the space where his side of the bond had rested, making itself known.

Words fail Arthur, and all he can think is,  _What will I tell Guinevere?_

It is proof, then, that he was never made to find his soulmate, because on revelation of their one-sided bond his thoughts are so caught up in his wife, he does not hear Merlin telling him that he is leaving, for awhile. That he'll be back.

The room is empty when Arthur decides just what he'll say, and he spends hours looking for Merlin in the wrong places before finding out that yes, Merlin was here, but now Merlin is gone.

That night, he takes a breath between bites, and nearly says something to Gwen over dinner –  _I had a bond, I have a bondmate, Merlin is my soul_  – but instead lets the moment pass.

That moment is where the end begins.

* * *

Time passes. Arthur's children grow, and Arthur grows older.

He hears rumors that Merlin is a tree, a fish, a wild man living in the Forest of Aescetir who speaks with beasts. It is not true, for when Gaius passes, Merlin seems to know, returning for a short time to spend the old man's last week at his side. Hunith sends her regards with him, and he carries Arthur's back after the cairn is built.

The Saxons grow bold, then, and battle comes to them from over the ocean. Arthur rides out to meet it, flanked by Amr and Gwydre; Llacheu is left to step into the duties of a crown prince, and Dagon is yet too young. In the battle Arthur loses the first of his children, Amr separated and then thrown back at them, cut down by Arthur's own men in the confused mess.

Not a year later Gwydre is killed on a hunt by a wild boar, gutted by yellowed tusks and passing his last, agonized moments in Arthur's arms.

The shock of it sends Gwen into premature labor with their last – unexpected – babe; and that tiny girl-child, born too soon, is named Gwenhwyach. She is the only one of their children that Merlin does not name, and is neither frail nor sickly as she grows, despite expectations otherwise. Instead, it is Gwen who sickens, even as her mother had sickened in later years.

But the woman Arthur married – for whom he, not quite unknowing, had forsaken his bondmate – is strong, so much stronger than he. She refuses to die, instead fighting for each moment with her children, with her kingdom, with Arthur.

Gwenhwyach is almost a woman when Arthur's wife leaves them, taken not by her own sickness but a fall from her horse on the cobblestones of the citadel. She hits her head, but though she breathes, she does not awaken.

More years pass. His sons – two, where there once were four – grow strong, his daughter grows beautiful, and Arthur grows gray.

Once more, the Saxons grow bold.

It is another battlefield, leagues and years away from that night in Camelot, when he finally sees Merlin again.

Arthur is cut down, and knows it, one hand pressed to his abdomen where ragged chainmail links bite into opened flesh. He cannot feel the sting of severed metal against his insides; the pain is too large for such a small thing.

Familiar blue eyes catch his, even as blood stains Arthur's lips. Comforting hands rest on his own before he is enfolded in strong arms.

Merlin has a bit of gray in his hair, and Arthur smiles to see it. "Is this the end, then, my friend?"

"No," Merlin smiles, and when his palm cups Arthur's cheek a shock of  _life_  and  _love_  touches him. This time he knows what it means. "It is the beginning."

Arthur reaches for Merlin's hand, then – feeling the connection rebound between them, and he embeds it into his heart.

"Once," Merlin whispers, and as his hand passes over Arthur's belly, the pain fades away like it never was. " _Future_."

And the world is washed in gold.


End file.
